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| New German history exhibition focuses on Nazis
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BERLIN (AFP) --- An exhibition exploring the tumultuous history of Germany has reopened with the story of the Nazis brought to the fore.
Roman artifacts, a bullet-pierced globe from Hitler's office and chunks of the Berlin Wall are all part of the sprawling permanent exhibition opened by Chancellor Angela Merkel last Friday that attempts to explain what it has meant over the last 2,000 years to be German.
The idea of a comprehensive exhibition on German history was the brainchild
of conservative former chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1987, which he intended to
house in a new building next to the Reichstag.
But two years later history itself dictated events with the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the exhibition was planned at the Baroque salmon-colored
Zeughaus, a former Prussian armory on the historic Unter den Linden boulevard
which housed East Germany's museum of "the Socialist German Nation".
The initial show that ran during the 1990s was widely criticized as
arbitrary, staid and even tinged with nationalism, particularly because the
section on the Nazi period was relatively small and tucked in a dark corner.
Hitler's uniforms
The new show puts German history's darkest chapter front and center, with a
ground-floor exhibit that includes Nazi uniforms, Hitler's desk, a bomb
shelter, letters sent from concentration camps, Albert Speer's design for the
gargantuan Germania Hall and a chilling model of the Auschwitz death camp.
Hitler's globe with its fitting symbolism is expected to be a major
attraction. A Russian soldier who had just taken the capital in 1945 took aim
at Berlin on the giant sphere, leaving a gaping hole on the map where the
German Reich had been.
The globe was the inspiration for the legendary dance scene in Charlie
Chaplin's 1940 Hitler satire "The Great Dictator".
The new show carefully steers clear of an overarching idea of national
identity, putting the accent on the regional flavor of the Bavarians, the
Saxons and the Prussians.
"German is not a race," Ottomeyer said in a pointed rejection of Nazi
notions of Aryan superiority. "German is a language that gave birth to a
culture."
Tumultuous past
Guests enter the exhibition through a Roman gate and trace the tumultuous path of the nation's history from the bitter battles fought by the Germanic tribes through to the euphoria of German reunification in 1990.
With more than 8,000 objects on display across 7,500 square meters of exhibition space, the history show covers everything from the precious to the mundane.
Highlights include Napoleon's two-pointed hat, retrieved by Field Marshal Gebhard von Bluecher after the Battle of Waterloo; the mercenary Albrecht von nig Wallenstein's epee from the Thirty Years' War; pith helmets, weapons and
prayer books; Kaisers' portraits and agitprop posters from the Nazis to the
Communists.
"History has become in vogue - we need it to find our way in a divisive
world," German Historical Museum director Hans Ottomeyer told reporters.
The exhibition also brings German history into the multimedia age with 100
computer stations that allow visitors to scroll through biographies and
digital reproductions of invaluable documents.
Key buildings in architectural history are projected onto partitions while
catastrophes like the plague are documented with the original 14th century
protective masks.
Merkel received a tour of the exhibition with 750 guests Friday ahead of
the opening to the public on Saturday.
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